


downpours of rain

by awkwardsorta



Category: Bandom, Midtown, The Academy Is...
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dancing to Britney, M/M, Science Fiction, Self-Doubt, Time Travel, Weather
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-09
Updated: 2009-02-09
Packaged: 2017-12-10 11:24:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/785519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardsorta/pseuds/awkwardsorta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's October, and the apocalypse has come. </p><p>"But there's no four horsemen," says Mikey Way, and Gabe flicks ash in his direction. </p><p>"There's rain of fucking biblical proportions, so fuck you."</p>
            </blockquote>





	downpours of rain

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the disillusioned interim between Midtown and Cobra Starship.
> 
> Heavy doses of made up canon. In fact, basically AU. TAI does not exist.

**Downpours of Rain**

 

 

 

 

The first time Gabe sees the man, it's a really shitty day. It's raining freezing sleet down on New York in July, and Gabe is huddled, along with a hundred other people, in the cramped entrance to the subway at 81st. Losing patience, he's about to step out into the weather when someone barrels past him and Gabe goes stumbling into the newspaper kiosk.

Gabe swears, and holds a hand up in indignant apology to the guy behind the counter. Behind him, someone says,

"Oh, no,"

Gabe turns.

"No," says the stranger, "No, it can't be-"

Gabe's arm shoots out of its own accord and grabs at a sleeve, but his fingers only graze the soft flannel. The guy spins around, runs back into the subway, and all Gabe sees is his hair, frizzy from the humidity and unbrushed.

"Hey," Gabe shouts after him. "Dude, what the fuck."

Then he looks up and everyone is staring at him like he's disturbing the peace.

He walks out into the rain.

 

The second time Gabe sees him, it's late at night but it's still sweltering in Gabe's apartment, a stifling 2 a.m. in August that has Gabe sitting on his windowsill, chain smoking and contemplating the drop.

His laptop is shuffling the night away behind him. It's Madonna, and then it's Fugazi, and then it's Gavin DeGraw, and that's just -

"I'm tired of looking 'round rooms," he belts out to the rooftops, "Wondering what I gotta do, or who I'm supposed to be."

It's almost too tragic to be true. Gabe laughs when the tune goes flat and throws his cigarette into the void.

"Why," he cries, "Why the fuck is it so hot."

The cry does not fall on deaf ears.

"Because," comes a voice from below, and Gabe almost falls off the sill when he leans forward to see who's there.

"Because the end of the world," cries the bodyless voice, "The end of the world is nigh."

Gabe barks a laugh.

There is a scuffle, and a rapid exchange between the old voice and a new one.

Gabe shouts a greeting.

There's no reply, but a streetlamp flickers off, somewhere down the street.

 

In September, Gabe stands on stage and sings his heart out and afterwards he drinks himself into oblivion. The four hours between midnight and puking his guts up at 4 a.m. are a black out, and when photos appear on his friend's site, he uses them to fill in the blanks.

It's the same old shit. It's Gabe's face, up close and overexposed. It's three drinks in one hand and a stranger in the other. It's Gabe on the floor of a bathroom stall, swearing at the camera with a smile on his face.

Sober, he can't match it.

He skims through the rest of the photos, only stopping when the picture doesn't include the many unfocused faces of his friends. There is, in fact, only one picture that matches this description. It's all black, except for one, startled face. The eyes are like a deer's in headlamps, the mouth frozen in a word of surprise. One hand is a blur and the man is disappearing out of the frame.

Gabe asks around, but no one knows who it is.

 

It's October, and the apocalypse has come.

"But there's no four horsemen," says Mikey Way, and Gabe flicks ash in his direction.

"There's rain of fucking biblical proportions, so fuck you."

Mikey just twists his mouth a bit and shrugs.

Gabe feels a bit like kicking Mikey, sort of spitefully.

Mikey says, "How are you doing, anyway."

Gabe twists his mouth mockingly back at Mikey. "Musically," Mikey clarifies, and steals Gabe's cigarette.

Gabe doesn't want to think about how he's doing - musically - so he goes over to Mikey's window and opens it.

"Hey!" says Mikey, but it's a half hearted protest and he only watches as the wind blows rain in an arc across his carpet. Gabe straddles the window frame and sits, one leg in and one leg out.

"You'll get wet," Mikey remarks, and Gabe restrains any smart arse reply, turning instead to look out across the street. It's getting dark, and people are just smudges of grey and black, scurrying down the street under umbrellas.

There's a man standing under a plane tree, across the street from Gabe, and he's looking up at Mikey's apartment where the light shines out yellow into the dusk. Gabe looks back. He doesn't feel like hollering. It might disturb the rain. The man tucks his arms around his body and presses himself further back into the tree trunk. He's wearing a plaid shirt again and he looks wet.

Gabe waves, sort of hesitant like Gabe could just be balancing himself if the guy doesn't notice.

The man pushes his hair behind his ear, but he doesn't wave back. Gabe chews on his lower lip and tries to not care.

He looks up into the rain and Mikey puts on Blur.

 

In November their album sales have fallen to such pitiful levels that Gabe buys a bottle of gin and wakes up on his front step. Except, it's not his front step, it's Chris Barker's front step, and the bottle of gin sits by his side, intact.

Gabe tries to throw up in the gutter in front of Chris Barker's house but he doesn't feel sick enough yet. He thinks he might still be drunk. There's a bus stop across the street, and he reads the map. It'll do.

He waits, sitting on the curb and staring out the gin, for a 53. Down the street, it waits at a crosswalk, and Gabe gets to his feet, joints stiff and head spinning. Someone takes his elbow as he stumbles off the sidewalk.

"Thanks," he says, and it's the man from the tree.

"You're the man from the tree," he says. Except it's not a man really, it's a boy. Gabe reaches out and touches the shirt that the boy is wearing. They smile at each other, and then the smile disappears off the boy's face like he wasn't supposed to do that, and he sticks his hands in his pockets. One comes out holding a cigarette.

"You got a light?" he says, but he stutters and Gabe bites his tongue and waits patiently till the end of the question. Cars race past behind his back and he rocks a little in the passing energy.

"Yeah," Gabe says, but he's not wearing his pants and there's no lighter in this pair. "No," Gabe says, and feels like a dick.

The boy shrugs. "Doesn't matter," he says, and throws the cigarette awkwardly into the road.

"Bye," he says, "Anyway."

Gabe stares.

"There's your bus," says the boy, waving vaguely down the road. Gabe turns. It's not the 53, it's the 79. "Fuck," says Gabe, and turns back, but the boy's gone. "Fuck," he says again.

He hails the 79.

On the bus he sits behind a group of teenagers. They don't know who he is, they don't give him a second glance. He stares at the dirt on the window and listens to their conversations. They're really excited about something to do with snakes on a plane, and Gabe feels like he's either totally out of the loop, or high, or both. The sensation of damp chilliness in the air is too depressingly normal for him to be high though, so he's going with: he's old, and past it, and what the fuck is a snake on a plane.

 

His friends laugh when he asks them, so he goes to the kitchen and puts the gin carefully back in the cupboard. He can still hear them laughing down the hall.

It turns out to be a film, a rumour, a cult, an internet fad. They look it up and show Gabe all the rumours, and Gabe feels kind of bummed that he didn't know about it before, because there's Samuel L Jackson, and snakes, and a fucking plane. It's kind of genius.

"That's amazing," he says, and they watch Samuel L Jackson films for the rest of the day. It makes Gabe feel a little better, but then it gets to eight in the evening, and they are sprawled around the living room, empty pizza boxes litter the carpet and someone says, "I need a drink."

Gabe's gin appears from the kitchen and he eyes it with mistrust, like a friend that you know is going to stab you in the back but you hang out with them anyway.

"I'm gonna hold back," he says, "I still feel bad from last night."

But his friends jeer and cajole and doubt his street cred and then just make him a drink anyway and, fuck it.

 

They go to a club, a dive in some divey area of the city. Gabe doesn't really care that it's a dive, the places they go are usually like that, but this is a place where people aren't allowed to dance or kiss or sing and Gabe feels like there's something shitty about that.

He drinks, anyway, and so he's feeling fuzzy around the edges, seventh vodka after eighth gin in hand, fuzzy enough that he leans a little to the left when he walks across the room to the cigarette machine. There's a bunch of kids standing in front of it and he puts a hand gentle on the back of the nearest boy, steers him out of the way and half heartedly hits on him all in one go. The boy sort of backs off, gets out of Gabe's way and out of his reach too.

Gabe gets his cigarettes, and when he turns around he almost trips over his own feet he's so surprised.

"The boy from the tree!" he cries, and it comes out a little louder than expected. Over at the bar, his friends are watching.

The boy meets Gabe's eyes and then looks away, quickly, giving a small shrug to his friend.

Gabe grabs his shoulder. "Hey," he says, "Don't you remember me?"

The boy looks a little freaked out. "Sorry," he says, "No." He gently removes Gabe's hand, and turns away.

"You've had your hair cut," Gabe says, like he doesn't recognise a put down when he sees one. "It looks good."

The boy is determined in his efforts to ignore Gabe though, and this only makes Gabe push more. He takes a hold of the boy's arm this time, and pulls a little. The boy's friends step a little closer. "Hey," says one of them, "Leave it, dude." Gabe backs off, hands held high, but he looks at the boy and the boy looks away, doesn't meet his eyes. Gabe hates to say it, because it means that Gabe is a lot worse at holding his liquor than he thought, but the guy seems to genuinely not know who Gabe is.

He backs off still further, placates the guy's friends and stops a few meters back. "Sorry," he says. "My mistake."

The boy meets his eye finally, and Gabe feels like crying.

"Don't worry about it," says the boy.

Gabe walks the thirteen blocks home.

 

Gabe sleeps all the next day and when he wakes up he feels a little calmer, and a little foolish too. He sort of thinks about picking up his guitar but that feels like a step that's a little too big for a day that only started at 6 p.m.

He gets his laptop out instead and checks his emails for the first time in months. There are emails from the label that he doesn't want to deal with, there are emails from his ex-girlfriend that he doesn't want to deal with, there are emails from his friends and from his family and he skims past them all. He opens an email from Pete, on a whim, because emails from Pete are always short and a bit stupid and generally don't come with any added worries.

It's typical Wentz, all incomprehensible sentences mixed in with Chicago gossip and links to Purevolume pages. At the end, tagged on as an afterthought, is a link, and the line, _me and patrick rediscovering justified, what are yr thougts?_.

Gabe clicks on the link and it's a mash up of Justin and Britney. He rolls his eyes, because that's so obvious it hurts, but he leaves it playing and thirty seconds into the track he wants to get up and dance.

He'll have a drink first, he thinks, then he'll dance.

 

In December, people in suits tell Gabe that the album severely undersold, and people in clubs tell him his music is shit, and if Gabe had any energy, he would tell people to fuck off. As it is, he sleeps all day, stays out all night, and keeps listening to Britney.

"You have got to get out of here," his friends say, "You have got to get a better taste in music."

"I'm worried about you," his Dad says, and Gabe leaves the house in daylight hours for once.

He goes to a cafe down the road, one where they know his name and his drink of choice. It is comforting, at least, but Gabe is still too cynical to let that soften him. He stands by the counter and scans the room for people to avoid. There's a couple from his university and a guy who Gabe likes to chew the fat with on better days. Gabe pulls his cap down low over his forehead and turns the other way. Tyler is sitting in the corner, waiting for him, and standing by the table is someone who looks familiar.

"Your coffee," says the barista, and Gabe turns with a start. He thanks her and smiles and when he turns back the guy has left Tyler's table and is coming towards the counter. When he spots Gabe, the look on his face is comically dismayed.

Gabe says nothing until the boy is within arms reach and Gabe's hand is shaking.

"Boy from the bus stop," he says, by way of greeting.

The guy nods, flicks his eyes past Gabe to the door.

"I'm Gabe," Gabe says, and switches the coffee into his left hand so he can hold his right out to shake.

The boy nods. "Yeah," he says, "Yeah. Um. I gotta go."

He pushes past between Gabe and a table. "Hey," Gabe says, and this time he gets a hold on the shirt sleeve. "Wait," Gabe says, "Wait."

The boy bites his lip.

"Were you- where were you two weeks ago? Saturday night?"

Puzzlement, comprehension, and caution go across the boy's face in a flash, and he says, carefully, "I was out of town."

Gabe feels himself physically deflate. "Okay, sorry," he says, "Sorry," and just lets go like he doesn't want to ask a million more questions of a stranger.

The boy hesitates.

From the corner, Tyler calls his name.

Gabe stands in the middle of the room, his coffee in his hand, and it takes a second to look at Tyler, and a second for the boy to disappear.

"Who was that," says Gabe. Tyler frowns. "That guy," says Gabe, "That boy, standing by the table."

Tyler looks baffled. "Oh," he says, "I guess he left these here."

'These' are fliers for an open mic night at a nearby basement club. Gabe puts his head in his hands and feels like he's been hit by a bus.

 

In January Gabe sits on the roof of his apartment building with his father, and his father writes lists of what Gabe is unhappy with in his life, and Gabe hums Ricky Martin and stares at the sky. Gabe doesn't know what he tells his father to write down but he knows that the building across the road is a popular place for pigeons, and that the sky goes the colour of bruises when it's about to rain.

It's been stormy for days but nothing has fallen yet.

The man in the cafe says, "Weird weather." The cafe is lit up a gloomy orange in the reflected light from outside, and Gabe agrees.

Gabe takes the subway out to Chris' house and wanders around the streets. They're still dry.

"It's hailing in Manhattan," says the girl at the ticket barrier. "Hailstones the size of golf balls."

Gabe watches the weather after the news and it's a gross exaggeration. They're about the size of peas. Gabe thinks he might go to Manhattan.

The hail has turned to sleet by the time Gabe gets there. He positions himself beside the newspaper vendor and waits.

Gabe waits all day.

The sleet subsides to rain, the rain disappears into mist, the mist to a clear night, and Gabe shivers under the starless sky. The vendor packs up, says good night.

Gabe watches the tourists, the shoppers, the businessmen and then the merrymakers go by. None of them are Gabe's stranger.

It is eight minutes to midnight when Gabe gives in, his toes numb and his mind too.

When Gabe gets home, there is a message on his answering machine. Gabe listens to it, then he goes to bed with his shoes still on.

 

Tyler finds him the next evening, feet drawing dirty scratches on the sheets.

"Get up," says Tyler.

"Did he mean it?" Gabe says.

"Whatever you mean, no. Whatever he actually said, yes."

Gabe sneers. He's not stupid, he knows the difference between a side project and abandonment.

"Where were you yesterday?"

Gabe hides his face in the pillow. It might be possible for sheer apathy to suffocate him, but Gabe won't take any chances.

"Where were you yesterday," Tyler repeats.

Gabe shrugs. "Manhattan."

"Why'd you turn your phone off?"

Gabe wants to say, _because I thought if I spoke to anyone I knew, I wouldn't have a chance of seeing that guy._ Except, Gabe doesn't want to admit it.

He wants to say, _because I knew it would only deliver bad news._ Which would be a lie.

Gabe wants to say, _because I'm tired of talking to people,_ but that's actually true, and so he just shrugs again. The pillow is wet underneath his mouth but to open his eyes, to move his head, would be an admission of defeat.

Tyler doesn't say anything for long enough that Gabe thinks maybe he left.

"Be an asshole if you want," Tyler says, and Gabe doesn't jump when he speaks. "But at least be a man and get out of bed."

"Why," says Gabe, like an asshole.

"Because if you don't, you'll have no band."

 

They go to the open mic night. The official reason is the Gabe is bored, and boring. The unofficial reason is what keeps Gabe daydreaming at night.

There are some decent tunes and some shocking.

Gabe and Tyler get on stage.

The lights are in Gabe's eyes and he feels elated and distracted. He narrows his eyes. Tyler coughs quietly. Gabe stares into the glare and says, "Fuck."

Tyler shifts his guitar on his lap.

Someone in the crowd whoops, and Gabe slowly becomes aware of a low hum of voices.

"Gabe," says Tyler, quiet and sure.

Gabe takes a hold of the mic and closes his eyes.

They sing In The Songs, and then they leave the stage. Gabe sits at the bar and Tyler fields the few fans in the room. There's a boy next to Gabe, and he's the boy from the club and not the boy from the bus and Gabe almost has a heart attack he's so overwhelmed.

He's about to say something and then the boy slips off his stool. Gabe blinks and the boy is onstage, guitar in hand and a cover song playing over people's heads right to where Gabe sits.

The song is sort of familiar, like something from Gabe's childhood.

He comes back to sit next to Gabe when he's done, and Gabe says, "Hey."

The boy looks at him. Gabe says, weakly jovial, "That was really nice, you have a really nice voice."

The boy smiles faintly. "Thanks," he says, "You too."

Gabe nods. "Thanks." He is mostly just relieved that the boy seems not to recognise him from the other night.

"Can I get you-" he says, and at the same time the boy says, "Midtown, right?"

"Oh, no, thank you," says the boy, and Gabe says, "Or something."

They stare at each other. "Or something?" says the boy.

Gabe looks at the stage. "Not anymore I don't think," he says.

"Shit," says the boy, and to Gabe it's the most eloquent thing he's heard in months.

"Don't give it up," says the boy. Gabe looks at him. "I mean, don't stop writing, right?"

Then something in Gabe snaps loose, and he feels light headed. "No," he says, music pouring into his head. "You too."

The boy smiles.

Gabe gets to his feet, doesn't trip over though words are at the tips of his fingers and rhythms are in his feet. "I have to go," he says, and he's a step away before he turns, reaches out a hand and says, "Gabe." The boy takes it, shakes his hand with not a lot of gumption and says, "William."

"Have a nice night," Gabe says, and takes the fifteen steps out of the club in three leaps.

 

It's snowing in February when they play their last show.

It's soft snow, settling in snowdrifts across the city streets, and Gabe wears his boots. It's like last February, and the one before that, and before that too.

It's a sold out show and Gabe won't deny he feels every emotion known to man and will almost certainly cry by the end of the night. He feels triumphant and exhausted, manic and depressed; he feels like he could take over the world and like his world is ending tonight.

The band are as charged as the crowd, the room throbs and Gabe sings so with so much force he collapses halfway through. They take a short break, Gabe downs a pint of water and four shots of tequila and then they're out on stage again. Gabe asks for the house lights to be turned up and he sings for the fans and only for the fans and behind his eyelids he remembers why this was worth it. Then he opens his eyes and he sees him.

Gabe is into the crowd before anyone can grab him, he won't even remember how he gets there afterwards but he's standing in front of his stranger, pressed on all sides by moving bodies and heat and noise. Gabe gets a hand up and out and holds onto him for dear life.

He presses their foreheads together, wet skin warm against wet hair, tightens his fingers around the back of his neck, takes the mic away from his mouth and says, "Don't leave yet, just don't leave again, wait, wait-" and then he wrenches himself away. Gabe runs through the crowd, jumps back onstage, and falls over. He lies on the floor and sings the rest of the song with his eyes closed.

"I can't stay," he says, before Gabe has even got his head around the fact that he waited.

"You are that kid," says Gabe, "Aren't you." It's rhetorical. Gabe's never felt such clarity, not ever.

Gabe smiles and the boy smiles back. His hair is damp with the sweat and the snow. He wraps his arms around his body. It's a thin jumper he's wearing, and Gabe's in less but he doesn't feel cold.

"William," Gabe says, trying out the name out loud. It's nice. "I wrote a song," he says.

William nods.

"I want to dance," says Gabe, like any of this makes sense.

William nods, again. Says real soft, "Yeah, yeah."

"Are you real?" Gabe says, and he's kidding, but he's not. He watches snowflakes drift into William's glass.

William grimaces. Pushes hair back behind his ear. Gabe's stomach flips. He thinks of his own lyrics and grimaces in mirror image.

"I'm writing," Gabe says, again, because it seems important. William bites his lip but smiles through it.

"Are you okay," asks William, and glances up.

Gabe feels his heart stop. "What the fuck," he says, "Who knows. Are you okay?"

"No one's okay," William says, and Gabe laughs with his head tipped back. William smiles like he shouldn't.

"I'm not supposed to do this, it isn't supposed to be like this," says William, and Gabe reaches out, touches William's jaw with two fingers and then takes hold of his drink. He feels like he could lift off from the ground and drift out over the snow covered city if he isn't careful.

"Wasn't supposed to be like what," he says, not because he particularly cares but just to distract himself. He watches William's mouth as he talks and doesn't hear a word.

"I'm not supposed to talk to you," says William, and Gabe makes a face. "It'll, I don't know, make something bad happen."

Gabe smiles.

"It's not a joke," William says earnestly.

"It's the fucking apocalypse," Gabe says, and smiles still.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you heartequals for hearing the original quote, and for telling me this didn't suck and for the beta as usual, and thank you simplemitosis for putting up with a stranger's rambling/pitching in at the eleventh hour to help a poor dumb English girl.
> 
> Influenced by, amongst others - Tintin, various Science Fiction stories, One Tree Hill, the horrifically disillusioned lyrics on Forget What You Know, and uh, the current weather situation in England.
> 
> It's time travel fic but at no point should you be expected to work this out for yourself. Don't expect canon factoids or coherent plots and we should get along just fine.
> 
> Written for the Music is Made Accidentally: The Overheard Challenge. My quote is actually what starts the fic off on its senseless ramble \o/
> 
> Title from Driving by Po Girl and C.R. Avery.


End file.
